Research and development

An important line of PetroLogic Synergy activities covers research development aimed at the exploration and mining of mineral resources and geo-materials and their processed products (in particular by thermal or chemical processes).
Among the expected results are a more efficient and cost effective processing, and a significant reduction of environmental footprint of industrial processes.

PetroLogic Synergy staff is involved in several research projects and offers its expertise in the research and development, design, and marketing of:

• Integrated systems of data storage and processing and equipment in the field of applied petrography.
• Sensors integrated systems for monitoring mineralogical changes and tracking in industrial processes such as ovens, quarries, and mines.
• Innovative techniques for the chemical and structural characterization of materials (micro- and nanocristalline).
• New synthetic materials (e.g., by testing processes such as heating—in laboratory and industrial oven—targeted to the synthesis of new materials from waste materials of metallurgical industry).
• Innovative systems (e.g., multi-sensors installed on autonomous robotic or remote controlled platforms, for the acquisition of environmental and geophysical data in an integrated form of the physicochemical property, mineralogy and geotechnical characteristics of soils for potential use in a wide range of sectors of economic and scientific interest (e.g., agriculture, precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, engineering geology, civil engineering, archaeology, and mineral exploration)

PetroLogic Synergy is also committed to R&D projects and the design and cosnstruction of new, innovative analytical systems linking robotics to state of art sensors for accurate and fast insitu anaalysis of rocks, sedeiments and soils in the field of precision agricolture, mining, environmental and civil engineering sectors.
The last developed project is PetroRov ©. Petrorov (patent pending) is an innovative unmaned ground vehicle (about 0.5 ton), crawler, driven by artificial intelligence with autonomous navigation, able to make physical and chemical analysis of the soil (up to 1 m depth), on- the-go and stop-and-go (with a specifically designed innovative multisensory probe in a drillhole) , either autonomously or after GPS delimitation of the navigation area/paths. Currently there is no similar multi-parametric analytical system on the market.
The innovative connotation of the project lies in the “web of things” approach adopted to assemble in a modular way, and in perspective, “customizable” in several varieties of PetroRov models, sensor configurations optimized for integrated collection multi-parametric of numerous soil properties (soil and subsoil) and for applications in countless economic and scientific sectors, in precision agriculture (AGRI PETROROV), in environmental monitoring (AMB PETROROV), in geotechnics, civil engineering, preventive and exploration archeology (ARCHAEO PETROROV), mining exploration (MIN PETROROV).

PetroLogic Synergy provides a microscopic and crystallographic expertise for the characterization of nano and cripto-cristallines materials, such as glasses, clays, surface alterations, environmental particulates, cements, metal alloys, pigments, porous materials, nanostructured particles.
Analytical methods include:

• X-ray Powder Diffraction (XRPD)
• Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)
• Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM)
• High Resolution Microscopy (HRTEM)
• Electron Diffraction
• Chemical Spectroscopy (EDXS)

The microscopic and spectroscopic analysis allows to identify size, morphology, preferential orientation, chemical composition, texture and level of particle dispersion involved in several processes.
PetroLogic Synergy offers also the possibility to carry out Electronic Diffraction Tomography (EDT) for the collection of 3D diffraction data from individual nanocrystals, thus ensuring a complete structural characterization of the material.